


Tides

by Sulwen



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sulwen/pseuds/Sulwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik kisses him for the first time in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tides

**Author's Note:**

> For a kink bingo square: mirrors and doubles.

To Charles, Erik looks like stone – stoic and unchanging, the angular planes of his face as hard and weathered as the beaten mountaintops. The first time he sees a crack in that stone, a grin full of teeth and joy flashing bright at him, it's as if the earth moves underfoot, the lay of the land suddenly shifted into something new and different and so desperately _interesting._

He finds himself drifting to Erik's mind without realizing it, after that, especially in the quiet moments, chess in front of the fire, hardly a word between them but the back and forth of “check.” Erik glances at his face more often than Charles had realized, and it's intoxicating, seeing himself through Erik's eyes, so-familiar features looking different and new. To Erik, Charles looks like water, the glint in his eyes like the sparkle of sunlight on clear rivers, the curl of his hair mimicking the gentle lapping of waves on the shore, his voice smooth and persistent as the rain.

Erik kisses him for the first time in the rain. He knows that it feels right to Erik, who doesn't know why but doesn't think to question himself, trusting to the well-practiced instincts that have kept him alive through hell. Through worse. And then Charles can't quite think any more, simply lets himself be pressed back into a trellis of roses, lets himself be kissed.

It's second nature to open himself up, to reach out for everything Erik is, body and mind and soul, and everything comes rushing in at once, too much, _far_ too much, as he is being kissed and kissing, two sets of lips, four hands grasping, and the sensation echoes back on itself and doubles, until Charles isn't sure any more where he is, _who_ he is, lost in the ether.

Erik pulls away to watch Charles gasp, watch him clutch at the interlaced plywood holding him up, not caring a moment for the thorny vines. He looks at Charles as if he _knows._

Charles hardly has enough breath to speak, but he smiles, watches through Erik's eyes as the rain finds new paths through the laugh-lines carved into his face. “Would you like to see?” he asks, earnest, excited, so eager to share.

He can feel Erik's reluctance, the walls he has built around the most vulnerable parts of himself, a necessary defense, and for a moment he thinks Erik will refuse, will begin to shut him out again, perhaps this time for good. And yet...from deep, very deep within those walls...there is a a voice, small and frightened but crying out with all its might for love, for touch, for _connection._

And Charles takes Erik's face in his hands and brings him to meet his eyes, and slowly, through the rain, shows Erik what he looks like when Charles see him, all the pain and anger and despair mere shadows in the face of such talent, such power, such _potential._

Erik is shaking in his hands, in his mind, and Charles sends the words to him with the calm and clarity that only comes from the inner voice.

_One day, my friend, you will be a great leader of men, men who will be drawn to your cleverness and your charisma and your unyielding dedication to your goal, men who will fall over themselves to do your bidding. But for the moment, I'm afraid, you have only me._

He means it as a joke, a distraction to keep Erik from being overwhelmed by the reflecting sensations between them. But Erik's eyes narrow, and his mouth twists into a deadly smirk, and his thoughts make Charles gasp anew, breath catching in his throat.

_Do my bidding, eh, Charles?_

“Anything...”

Charles doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until he registers Erik seeing it, watching his lips move. And in the next moment they're kissing again, scorchingly hot in the everywhere-coolness of the rain, wet in a decidedly different way, and there's no telling who is who, who is self and who is other, only the simple, beautiful sensation of two bodies aching to come closer, closer, closer.

And soon enough Erik's hands are on him, groping desperately under the soaked fabric of his pants until he finds his grip, and Charles can't keep quiet at the touch of Erik's callused fingers, everything rain-slick and frantic, and he wants to touch Erik, wants him to feel this, but all his channels are wide open now and it's doesn't matter that Charles can't remember how to move his hands, because Erik is gasping too, every stroke echoed perfectly back to him, and he's rutting up against Charles now, thrusting and stroking and, oh God, _kissing_ again, licking into his mouth like he's never tasted anything sweeter.

For the first time, Charles watches his own face as he comes, strange and beautiful and overlaid with Erik's pleasure like the breaking of waves against the cliff-face.

It's difficult in a way it never is, afterward, to recede back into his own mind. Erik is warm and languid and so _open,_ and Charles doesn't think he can bear going back, wants to stay here in the aftermath for hours, days. Possibly forever.

Instead, he runs his hands through his mussed-up hair, and takes deep breaths of damp, fresh-smelling air, and closes the channel between them as gently as he can manage. Erik looks shaken, for a moment, stricken with the loss of the other man inside his head. But then Charles presses himself up close against the hard lines of Erik's body, and Erik's arms go around him and hold him tight, and though they are no more than themselves again, Charles suddenly realizes that they are no less _together._

Years later, in the darkest of hours, when Erik seems to have locked himself away under so much metal Charles will never be able to touch him again, there is again the faint smell of rain inside his mind, a shared memory too deep to ever quite let go.


End file.
